Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of graphics processors. More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus and method for processing commands in tile-based renderers.
Description of the Related Art
In tiled rendering the screen is divided up into a number of tiles. During the sorting phase, the geometry is sorted into the tiles. The graphics processing unit (GPU) then renders each tile separately using on-chip buffers (e.g., in a cache) to minimize the memory bandwidth. Since the scene is rendered by processing N tiles, the commands for rendering the screen must be replayed N times.
Commands for rendering the screen are submitted in a command buffer comprised of several pairs of state and primitives (geometry), which has to be strictly rendered in the given order. The command buffer may include several indirect buffers containing state and primitive commands.